Tuesday 5 July 2016

Window


Why is it that every time I pass the room where your body lay the for the week after you died I want to cross over to the stranger walking on the other side of the road, point to the window of the room where you were, and tell them that’s the last place I saw you?

I remember your pale white hand lay on top of the blanket. 
Where it had been placed before we came in. 
You couldn’t move it yourself of course. 
You never would again.

It made me feel so uncomfortable and sick to think that a total stranger, someone you had and would never meet, had only yesterday washed your body and hair. 
The hair I so often over the years had plaited, pulled, straightened, run my fingers gently through. The hair that in your later years I would tease you about, telling you that you looked like a rugrat. (It was very short and she’d always tie the bobble really high up on her skull so it stuck up).

She'd put makeup on you. 
Not the kind you loved to wear.
(BRIGHT RED lipstick,
PURPLE lipstick,
BRIGHT GREEN eyeshadow,
THICK BLACK eyeliner,
MASCARA)

She warned us before we came in to see you,
your skin was 'starting to change'

It was beginning to fall away


She'd had to cover your arms up, so we didn't feel distressed...

She'd used the white pashmina I'd leant you for my graduation

I like the idea you were being laid to rest with something of mine wrapped around you

Like I was holding you,

like I always had,

and would be forever.






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